[0:05] Smart, ambitious people make a single common mistake when they are pursuing career growth. My name is Rusty Gaillard, and this is Do Something Different, a leadership podcast. The common mistake that smart, successful people make when they're pursuing leadership growth is that they think they need more skills in order to be successful. Now, if you wanna be a lawyer and you don't have a law degree, sure, you need to get more skills. But for most people, it is a mindset, not a skillset that they need to change. And it starts with this very simple question. What do you want? Most people get on the career train and they ride that train. They just get on and they start going and they rarely pause to think, what is it that I actually want from my career? The answer to that can fall into a few relatively simple categories. One, of course, is a sense of progress or success in your career. And that could be impact where you're having a bigger and bigger impact on your company, or it can be income where you're growing your income. It can be both of those things, of course, but there's some other dimensions that may be relevant. One might be the content of your work. Are you involved in the daily activity

[1:21] and production of work in that daily churn? Or are you more of an advisor or decision maker that is guiding strategically the direction of the firm?

[1:32] How meaningful or purposeful is your work is that an area that you want to lean into or what is the balance between how much time you're spending at work and how much time you're spending with your family and investing in yourself perhaps there's something here about the people you work with and the relationships you build all of these are relevant factors and dimensions to this question of what do you want your work to look like, And one of the biggest mindset gaps that smart, ambitious people have is they don't proactively define what they're looking at. Instead, they respond to what they see around them as possibilities. They say, well, this is the environment I'm in. Therefore, it's what I have to accept. Or this is the job opportunity I got. Therefore, that's the place I'm going to go. I can't tell you how many people that I have talked to who have never really gone out to proactively define the kind of work they want to do and then go find that opportunity. So many smart, successful people have opportunities that come to them and they respond to those, they accept them without really thinking about, is this moving me closer to what I truly want?

[2:46] Fundamentally my belief is that so many of the people that i talk to want freedom in their career the freedom to choose the freedom to be self-directed in the kind of work you're doing the kind of people you're working with the kind of industry you're in the kind of impact you're having the kind of financial reward that reward that you're bringing home all of those things are important but it comes down to this sense of freedom and that's in contrast to a sense of obligation or responsiveness when opportunities come to you? You say yes because it's a quote unquote good opportunity, but is it moving you in the direction that you want? Is it an exercise of your freedom of what is possible for you?

[3:31] That question of what is it that you want and leaning into this definition of freedom that you are free to choose and define the kind of career you want to have. That is not, for the most part, a skill set question. That is a mindset question. The truth is that we are very loyal to our self-perception. How we see ourselves translates directly into what we do and how we act on a day-to-day basis. I saw a wonderful example of this in a television show a couple years old called Undercover Billionaire. They took these three very, very successful billionaire level people, and they took them out of their normal day-to-day lives, and they put them in a very difficult situation. They were dropped into a city that they were not familiar with, and they were given $100, a car, and a cell phone with no contacts on it. They could not use their real name. They could not leverage their network. They could not access any of their assets. They had to make do in this city they've never been to where they don't know anyone with just a hundred bucks, an empty cell phone and a car. And within 90 days, not only did they have to survive, they had to identify a business opportunity and build it into a business that when it was valued by an accountant would be valued at more than a million dollars.

[4:56] Go into a city. You don't know anyone. You have to build a million dollar business in 90 days. That was the challenge these people had to face. And was it difficult? Of course it was difficult, made for great TV. But you saw them struggle with the challenge. And yet, these were all people who had done this before. They were self-made. They had built their own successful career. And that is how they showed up. At their core, they knew this is who they were. They had this experience. It's how they saw themselves. They had that confidence, that deep-seated belief. This is who I am. I can do this. And all of them were successful. Sorry, just a little spoiler alert there. Spoiler alert came too late. But they made it because that is how they saw themselves. So you have to ask yourself, how do you see yourself? Do you see yourself as the kind of person who knows you are free, that you can define the kind of career that you want and craft it for yourself? Or do you see yourself as someone who is more responsive, who makes the best or optimizes given the situation and the resources that are available to you in that moment?

[6:15] How you see yourself 100% determines how you show up. And I think we all know that how you show up, the decisions you make, the actions you take, determine the results that you get. So if you see yourself the same way that you have always seen yourself, because most of us have a self-definition, which is backward looking, it's based on what you've done in the past. We say, well, these are the things I've done. That's for, therefore, this is who I am. This is what I'm capable of. That then becomes a constraint on your future action. This is who I am. This is what I'm capable of. This is my personality. This defines me. That defines your actions and your actions define your results. So you're repeating history over and over again because your current version of yourself is based on what you've done in the past and your actions that you're taking today are going to determine your future. But your actions are based on how you see yourself, which is backward looking.

[7:11] We talk a lot in the leadership world about authenticity and authenticity is about being true to who you are who you are but here's a key question what does that mean who you are because your definition of who you are is based on what you've done in the past that is a limited definition and your goal of being an authentic leader can be holding you back. The question is, can you be authentic to your full potential as a leader, as a person, as someone who is building and navigating their own career? And that requires you to do some things differently. It requires you to think differently and to shift your mental perception of who you are and start to define who you are based on where you're going rather than where you've been?

[8:02] That is, for most people, a question they never tackle. And it is this question of what do I want? And who am I in that situation? So let me just give you a question, an exercise to walk through right now. Think about a career that you would love. It doesn't have to be your one and only career. It's not something you're passionate about. It doesn't have to be the perfect, perfect, perfect career, but just imagine a picture for yourself of something that you would love. The kind of work you're doing, the kind of industry you're in, your role, what your responsibilities are, the nature of the people that you're around, the impact that you're having, how hard you're working, what your financial compensation is. Just imagine a picture that would blow your mind and say, if I had that, it would be beyond anything I could imagine.

[8:54] Then put yourself into that picture and say, who would I be? Who would I have to be to be that person? How confident would I have to be? How calm would I have to be? How composed? How much would I have to believe in myself in order to do this? How would I have to shift my self-perception from who I am today in order to fit into that picture? One of the simplest illustrations of this that I give to people is, imagine your compensation today. Let's just say you make $100,000 for the sake of a round number and you were interviewing for a job that paid $150,000. You'd say, hey, that's cool. I can probably do that. I make $100,000 today. I'm a $100,000 person. I could probably stretch to $150,000. Cool. I'm in. Well, let's say you're $100,000 salary today and somebody offers you to interview for a $500,000 position that pays $500,000 a year. Most people would say, yeah, that's not me. You know, yeah, would I love it? Of course I would love it. I would love to have that kind of job, but I'm not qualified. I've never had a job like that. I've never been paid that much money. I couldn't do that.

[10:05] That is a very simple illustration of the way we hold ourselves back. We see ourselves as a $100,000 person. And when presented a $500,000 opportunity, we say, no, that's not for me. But if you want to become a $500,000 person, and I'm using money for an illustration, but it doesn't have to be money. It could be the number of hours you work. It could be how much you're in the daily churn of the details versus being a decision maker. It could be how much you leverage and empower your team versus how much you're involved in the day-to-day execution and operation of the business. All of these things are just different ways of expressing this concept of, I'm a $100,000 person. I could never have a $500,000 job. That is the self-image at work. And if you want to be authentic to your true self, you have to be authentic to the fact and start to acknowledge the fact that you are far more than what your past history indicates.

[11:03] You're more than your resume. You're more capable than what you've done. You are capable of learning and growing and applying yourself and stretching and trying new things. And that is the core that you want to lock into and say, when I embrace that, that becomes the definition of who I am. And that kind of person can be a $500,000 person. I've never done it so far, but am I capable of it? 100%.

[11:30] So how do you start to put yourself into that place? It's incremental. It's step by step. But it requires seeing yourself for more than what you've done in the past. You are not defined by your past experiences. You are not defined by your present circumstances. You are not defined by the content of the work that you're doing or the amount of money that you make or the people that you're working with or the titles that you've held. You are not defined by any of that. Ask yourself, what do I want? Where do I want to go? And then who do I have to be to be the kind of person who can grow into that? What do I have to learn to do differently? What do I have to, what kind of risk and discomfort do I need to learn to tolerate?

[12:18] These are the skill sets and the mindsets of a growing person. The word mindset came to be popular a number of years ago after a book written by carol dweck with the title of mindset and she had a very simple concept of what mindset meant basically putting most people into two categories or two dimensions of mindset a fixed mindset and a growth mindset the fixed mindset is i am who i am this is my personality these are the strengths i have this is what it is and a growth mindset is i am a learning growing evolving person changing every day i have the capability to learn and grow and how you see yourself defines how you relate to the world how you relate to opportunity how you relate to challenge whether you would, even try to go for that five hundred thousand dollar job when i'm only a hundred thousand dollar person.

[13:16] Adopt a growth mindset. Remind yourself, I can learn, I can grow, I can improve, I can become a better person. And when you lean into that, that is the pathway to growth. And when you have to answer the question, what do I want? Seeing yourself as a growing person is how you get there. Don't start with the skills. Don't go read another book. Don't go listen to another podcast. Just figure out what it is that you need to start doing differently. And it starts mentally. It starts in your head. How do you see yourself differently? Seeing yourself differently, transforming how you see yourself is far more powerful than gaining a new skill.

[14:06] As you're listening to this, take something from this. And I invite you to just start with the very simple question of what do you want? and think out of the box, unconstrained by all the things that you've done in the past, what your resume looks like, what your family might think, your friends might think, your fears or concerns around your income level. Let go of all of those things and stretch instead to what do you want? What would you just, what would blow your mind in terms of being so great that you would just be thrilled about that kind of work? From the content of the work, the people you're working with, the income level, the amount of balance you have between work time and family time and personal time. Aim for a 10 out of 10 or 11 out of 10 and stretch for that. And then ask yourself, how do you have to see yourself differently in order

[14:53] to be a person who has that? And that becomes your starting point. I hope you take this and put it into practice because it is in the doing that you make a change. Have a great week.